Report 1772
Report #1772 Skillset: Shadowbeat Skill: CrowCaw Org: Glomdoring Status: Rejected Aug 2017 Furies' Decision: Not at this time. Problem: Bard rework: The current concept behind crow caw is use it and other bleed attacks to pressure bleeding to get the target to low mana where by Crowcaw starts at 25% mana and under starts to do 25% of the targets health damage. This design doesn't work in the current balance. Part of the issue is the 25% mana issue that miasma and swoop have as well. I'm taking inspiration from pfarewell and cairnlargo and trying to find a bit of a middle ground between the two to put crow caw there. 3 R: 6 Solution #1: Remove the Stun from CrowCaw. This is part of the downgrading Bards control and I'd expect to see other bard reports to remove stuns/disrupts/etc from existing skills as well. Switch the requirement % of CrowCaws damage hit from 25% to 50% mana requirement. And add a new feature to CrowCaw. Crowcaw as a build to burst ability. When casting crow caw you place a debuff on the target called CrowsMadness. This debuff will fade away one level after 20 seconds out of the bards presence or 20 seconds after casting. Casting it again will refresh the timer. Hitting level three will remove the madness and place the debuff curse in its place. This debuff can be built from level 1 to level 3. At level three it invokes a Curse of the Crow upon the target. This curse will last 15 seconds and buff widowsmercy hits to do an additional 1500 bleed when hitting the target of the curse. Player Comments: ---on 8/5 @ 01:33 writes: This curse will last for 15 seconds. With crowcaw being a three second cast time that'd give a bard 12 seconds of attack time with it up. Time for roughly four shadowchords. Just ball park numbers here but if it did 1500 bleed your talking about 1800 damage from the chord plus 1500k bleed. The concept behind it is akin to pfarewell in allowing a set up that does devastating vitals pressure but mana and health instead of a pure health bomb. I think pfarewell is a bit too good for groups myself with how quick it can be set up which is why I'm not asking for something directly akin to it and gating crowcaws burst behind a longer set up and with a bigger power cost. ---on 8/5 @ 01:34 writes: The way I envision this working is the bard has two options in how to use it. They can blow their power on it straight away to rush to the curse. This would take 6 power and let them start doing their damage bleed burst after the first 9 seconds. The second option for tougher targets would be to build it up slowly. So cast crowcaw, let power regen, cast it again to build to the curse then once you have them at a level three you hit the curse, burst damage and bleed to try and push them low enough in mana and then use crow caw under 50% mana with its damage hit to finish them off. ---on 8/5 @ 01:35 sets as pending ---on 8/18 @ 00:58 writes: It's hard to evaluate this report without knowing the extent of Bard changes, so I'm voting abstain (I expected this report to be postponed, honestly). But I do have concerns that this removing the stun is not sufficient justification for adding that much potential power to the ability, considering it'll still do the base bleed and mental afflictions. Though obviously it'd be weaker in situations where you can't stack to three or they're not below the new 50% threshold. ---on 8/19 @ 13:24 writes: This looks like it'd be totally insane in groups. Opposed ---on 8/20 @ 15:31 writes: It'd be like a more costly pfarewell set up costing 6 power and three balances before you could burst vs 3 power and 1 balance. But with bleed instead of pure direct damage. Could drop the afflictions down to 1 so it's more like pfarewell then in that it just does 1 afflictions, although blackout would be the stronger affliction. ---on 8/21 @ 11:36 writes: I feel like, given that the bard overhaul is on hold, this report should not be considered now. ---on 8/21 @ 16:54 writes: I agree with Aeldra, as the Bard rework is tabled, I see no reason for these changes. On face it also seems far too powerful and tripling down on an already strong synergy. ---on 8/27 @ 23:08 writes: The report can stand on its own outside of the bard rework. Pfarwell and cairnlogo have been reworked outside of the bard overhaul to give a high damage burst route outside of octave for their respective bard specs. If the numbers dont add up to you we can adjust or change them but well when one bard spec can cleave 50% of your health in a two balance combo I'm not seeing the issue with letting a different bard do a similar thing with a longer set up. I specifically designed this to be weaker than the cantor set up for group combat but the numbers could be adjusted. Most likely make them more % based instead of a fixed bleed. ---on 8/28 @ 00:49 writes: No. Since you are so adamant that bards are too good at everything, it stands to reason that 1) bards should be nerfed and 2) they don't necessarily require anything in return for being nerfed. What you are asking for here is to remove the stun from CrowCaw, but instead give it something that will essentially wipe a person's health and mana via bleeding with very little set up. I don't really understand how you can argue this is balanced in any way, bard rework aside.